


Sky Blue Sky

by lookninjas



Series: Children's Work [9]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, End-of-the-World Theology, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Multi, Religion, Religious Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-09-03 11:31:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8710957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lookninjas/pseuds/lookninjas
Summary: Snoke may have been a monster, but even monsters die.  The aftermath isn't an easy thing, but we survive, and we keep moving.





	

They never did tear it down.

Some of the buildings have collapsed, or are on their way there. The armory, that’s gone now. The steps are still there, though, and Rey stares at them, tries to picture herself there again, the girl she was. She remembers her hair, the way it tangled and knotted under her scarf. She remembers the too-long denim skirt, the hem ragged and dusty. She remembers the dirt under her nails.

She remembers the misery, the way her eyes burned and stung. How she longed for her mother and was terrified of Plutt, how she hated the compound and the First Order and Snoke, how she wanted everything just to stop and let her go back to who she used to be. How much it all hurt.

And then Ben came. In his t-shirt and his jeans, with his big ears sticking out from underneath his short hair. And he smiled at her, and just for a second, she thought --

Maybe it could be better. Maybe it didn’t have to hurt so much.

She leans her head on Finn’s shoulder, and he kisses her hair.

“He never really could explain it,” she says, and knows that Finn probably has no idea what she’s talking about, and knows, too, that it won’t bother him. She gives him a little bit of explanation anyway. “Why he took me. Away from the First Order. He just said that God wanted it. He couldn’t explain how he knew; he says he just… knew. So that was what he did.”

“Well,” Finn says, and squeezes her hand. “I guess it wasn’t such a bad idea, was it?”

It wasn’t, not for Rey. It was the best thing that ever happened to her. She’s grateful for it every day.

“This is where it happened, though,” she says, because that’s the point, isn’t it? This is where it happened. Rey sitting here, lost and alone; and Ben, equally lost, almost nearly as alone, stumbled here towards her, and everything changed. “Right here. I was sitting on those steps, and he came and he sat with me, and God -- God showed him something. Told him what to do. Right there on those steps.”

She stares at the steps, at the ruins just behind them, and tries to see herself and Ben sitting there, the way they were. When she was five and he was fifteen and their world was on the verge of changing forever, even if neither of them understood. And it shouldn’t be possible, but the longer she looks, the closer she comes to seeing something. To seeing them again, those ghosts of who they used to be. She can’t quite bring herself into focus -- just a small shadow draped in fabric, so covered up that she’s almost invisible -- but for just a moment, Ben is so clear. He looks at her, at Finn standing with her. Like he sees them. Like he knows that they’re there. And he smiles the exact way he smiled then, like he just got the best news of his life.

Only for a moment, and then he’s gone again.

Rey can barely breathe. Her eyes fill up with tears. It just -- he just seemed so real.

Finn squeezes her hand. “Then I’m glad I came with you,” he says. “To see this. I mean, if it wasn’t for this place, we wouldn’t have --”

Rey’s cell phone buzzes in her pocket. She probably shouldn’t even look -- it’s probably Kaydel, or maybe Peazy -- but she can’t not, either. Even knowing that Ben’s somewhere near, no reason to call her, she has to check her phone just in case. Force of habit. She digs it out of her pocket, glances down.

It isn’t Ben. It’s Leia.

And she knows in an instant that something’s wrong, and she doesn’t want to answer that phone, but she has to, so she does.

“Hello?”

 

*

 

It’s a dark day.

Not just the pall of clouds, although they’re hanging heavy over the world today. The whole summer’s been grey, seems like. Last year it was seventy-five by St. Patrick’s Day, brilliant sunshine the whole summer through, hot and gorgeous and perfect. Then winter came, with brutally heavy snowfalls and unceasing cold, and it never really seemed to let up. It’s barely sixty today, damp and dark.

But that’s not the problem. Not really. It’s something else entirely.

_I changed my mind_ , he said, as Ben sat on the edge of the bed, back hunched, everything about him fearful. The truth is, he hadn’t changed anything at all. He’d always wanted to come here, to be by Ben’s side for this. He’d been worried about smothering him, that was all. But the curve of Ben’s spine and the heaviness of Ben’s sagging head told him that _smothering_ was no longer a concern. It was support he needed today.

_I want to come with you. If that’s still okay. I won’t get in the way or anything, I just want -- To be there. If you want me._

And Ben took a deep breath, and his spine unbent a little. _Yeah,_ he said, relief obvious in his voice. _Yeah, that’d be good._

Once he’d said that, Poe finally felt free to reach out and run his hands over Ben’s arms, come up behind him and rest his chin on Ben’s shoulder and let Ben sag into him, just for a second. It wasn’t much, maybe, but it helped.

And now Ben is thirty feet away from him, bundled up in his ratty black hoodie, pacing back and forth in front of Snoke’s old house and murmuring quietly to the reporter trailing at his heels. Poe hangs back, lets them talk -- anyway, he’s heard all of it now, according to Ben, and he doesn’t believe Ben would lie. But even if he did, the interview isn’t why he’s here. There’s something else. Something coming. Poe doesn’t usually believe in this sort of thing, but, well. This is Ben, and Ben has always been different.

Then Poe hears footsteps.

He turns his attention from Ben for a moment and sees Rey hurrying towards them, skirt swirling around her ankles. Finn follows in her wake, already apologetic, and this is it.

He turns back to Ben. Ben is already looking past him, eyes on Rey. Then the reporter stops short in his pacing, digging in his pocket for his phone, and everything lurches into motion again, inexorable. A crash Poe can see but cannot stop.

He can only be here, and hope that it helps.

 

*

 

_Dead_.

Somehow, it doesn’t make sense.

It should. Of course it should. Snoke was an old man when Ben met him. That he lived as long as he did is the astonishing thing. When Ben saw him last, he was --

_So calm, that faint smile, the black eyes. Gaunt, but not frail. Never frail. There was a power in him, always --_ the Lord gives us strength _, he used to say, and he was so strong. So much stronger than he seemed. Rarely slept. Never seemed to eat. Even when Ben had to take his meals in Snoke’s sight, clumsy and messy and_ mortal _, Snoke never --_

No. No. Stop.

Snoke was human, and he was old. Now he is dead. None of this should be surprising. It certainly isn’t the end of the world.

_Either we’ll succeed in my lifetime, or…_

And he would shrug, and smile that faint smile, and his black eyes would glitter, and Kylo would picture a sea of bones and have to fight to mask his shudder.

He buries his head in his hands and tries not to hyperventilate.

Footsteps on the wood of the porch. Someone settles on the swing next to him; it shifts and twists a little under their weight.

His father drapes an arm around him and tugs him in close to his chest. Ben goes gratefully, curling like a child into his father’s arms.

_He fears you. Of course he fears you. Because he will never understand you._

But he does. That, at least, is one lesson Ben has managed to unlearn. His father understands him, not always, but more than enough.

Ben’s father strokes his hair. His chest rises and falls steadily under Ben’s cheek.

“I’m here,” he says. He is. He always was. When Ben needed him the most, he was right there. “I’m right here.”

He always was. When it felt like the world was ending, Ben turned to his father, and his father was always there.

He still is.

Which means the world still isn’t ending. He may not believe it yet, not entirely, but that doesn’t mean it still isn’t true.

“Dad,” he says, and his voice cracks, and he starts leaking tears into his father’s shirt. “ _Dad_.”

“I know, kiddo,” his father says, and pulls him in tighter. “I know.”

Ben believes him.

It’s not much, maybe, but it’s somewhere to start.

 

*

 

“I would bring him back to life,” Leia says, over her second scotch, and Han raises an eyebrow at her. “I would. I would bring him back to life, so I could murder the bastard with my bare hands.”

Anyone else, it’d be hyperbole.

Well. Anyone else but Hux.

Leia, though, she’d do it, if she could. If she’d thought for one second she could kill Snoke and get away with it, he would’ve been dead fourteen years ago. She didn’t because she wanted Ben to have someone to come home to, but if the right opportunity had presented itself --

Leia would.

Han wouldn’t.

What that says about him, he can’t begin to speculate.

Anyway, he certainly couldn’t do it now. Not after seeing that emptiness in Ben’s eyes again. That particular lost look he gets when he goes back to the dark places in his head and finds Snoke’s ghost still there, lurking about. Even now that he’s literally a ghost. But the point is, Han’s seen it now, Ben’s reaction to Snoke’s death. He doesn’t need to see it twice. Even if Ben’s okay in the end, even if he’s strong enough for a repeat, Han’s heart is too old to keep breaking like this.

He won’t pretend there wouldn’t be some satisfaction in choking the life out of Snoke, but in the long run, it just isn’t worth it.

Apparently, Han’s decided to start thinking about the long run now. Life does funny things to a man.

He drinks to try to wash away the bitterness; Leia rests a hand on his arm when he finally sets the glass back down. She doesn’t say anything, though, doesn’t prompt him. Just looks at him with those round, dark eyes, and waits.

Finally, Han cracks. “I just wanted to hear him say, just once, that he did it on purpose,” he says. “Honestly, I didn’t even need to hear it. But for him to say it to Ben. To admit what he did, that he knew he was doing it, that it wasn’t some sort of mistake or misunderstanding, that he knew the whole damn _time_ \--”

Too loud. Especially with the kids sacked out in the living room, even Finn this time, pulled relentlessly into Ben and Rey’s orbit. Not that he seems to be fighting it hard.

Not that that is a reason for Ben’s dad to wake him up shouting, either.

He takes a breath, tries to get himself under control. “I don’t even know if it would help,” he admits. “I don’t know how this works. I’m not a shrink; I’m just a dad. But I know Ben still thinks it’s his fault, maybe not always but most of the time, and I hate that, Leia. I hate it. Seeing him twisted up like that… I hate it. I really, really do.”

He’d apologized, after everything. Half in Han’s lap, his head on Han’s chest, he’d said, _I’m sorry, Dad,_ and _I know I should be --_ and _I don’t know why this is so_ \--

Han couldn’t do anything but hug him. At that, it was an improvement. Fourteen years ago, he’d had to settle for clutching a phone. Having Ben there, actually there next to him with his head on Han’s chest and his arms tight around Han’s waist, was an improvement. But Han’s always been a greedy bastard. He’ll always want more.

“I know you do,” Leia tells him, her hand still on his arm, her eyes still fixed on him. “I hate it too.”

“If he’d just fucking admitted it. Just _once_.” But he didn’t, of course. He would have rather died. And he did. He died without ever telling Ben that he was sorry.

And maybe it wouldn’t have helped. And probably, almost certainly, Ben will move on without it. He’s tough like that. Still. He _deserved_ it. After everything Snoke did to him, he deserved some kind of acknowledgment.

But since when does anyone in this life get what they deserve.

“I really hate this, Leia,” Han says, and her hand slides up his arm, slips into his hair, pulls his head down to her shoulder. She’s softer than she used to be, padded out a little with age, but she’s stronger now, too. And she was damn strong before, so that’s saying something. He’s never been afraid to lean on her. He’s always known she could hold him up with one hand if she had to.

“I do, too,” she tells him, and kisses his hair. “I do too.”

But they keep going. What else is there?

“Leave it to Snoke to make it so we can’t even properly enjoy him dying,” Han mutters, and Leia lets out a little, undignified snort and pets his hair. “Bastard ruins everything.”

“Well,” Leia says, and wraps her other arm around him, holding him close. “I’m still peeing on his grave. If I ever find out where he’s buried, anyway. You wanna be my lookout?”

Han buries his grin in Leia’s shirt. “Always,” he says, and kisses the nearest bit of fabric. “Always.”

It’ll pass, of course. They’ve already made it through the worst without Snoke breaking them. They’ll survive this too. If Han sometimes wishes they had to spend less time surviving things, well.

Life’s a bitch. Then you die. At least Snoke went first. Now they all get to enjoy a world free of him, hopefully for a good long time. It’s not everything Han wanted, but it’s enough.

He’s still got Leia and he’s still got Ben, and it’s enough.

 

*

 

Irenaeus would probably say that Snoke was a necessary part of Ben’s moral growth. Irenaeus would probably say that God placed Snoke in Ben’s way to help him become the man he was meant to be. Irenaeus would probably say that Ben should be thankful for Snoke, for helping him to become good.

Luke has never really been a fan of Irenaeus, and that’s putting it mildly.

“Obviously, I’m not going to do it right now,” Ben says, both hands curled around his mug of tea, seeking warmth. Another cool day in a season full of them. Ben’s wearing the shirt he wore to the deposition, the brown plaid flannel that seems to serve as his own personal security blanket. Luke has a few of those. A remarkably ugly sweater that Leia gave him ages ago, a t-shirt he acquired in San Francisco just before he finally stopped running from God. An actual blanket, one that Breha’s mother crocheted for him when he was a child.

A picture of himself and Ben, taken at Motor City Pride last month, stuck to his fridge with a Petoskey Stone magnet in the shape of the state of Michigan.

“I mean, even if I thought -- Poe would worry. Rey would worry. Everyone would worry. But I… I want to get back to it as soon as possible. I don’t know, it just feels like… Like maybe Snoke didn’t want me to do it. I know that’s ridiculous, but --”

“It’s not ridiculous,” Luke tells him, and means it. “Snoke did everything he could to keep you silent. To make it impossible for you to talk about what he did. I don’t know if he knew about this article of yours, but if he did… Well. I don’t think he’d have liked it much. So I don’t think you’re ridiculous at all. Not a bit.”

Ben half-smiles at him; he brushes dark hair out of his eyes and then reaches out for Luke’s hand. “There’s things…” He bites his lip, turns away a little. Turns back again, sorrow in his eyes. Luke’s seen those eyes in a hundred different faces. Every one of those people had been hurt badly by someone who should have sheltered them. Different hurts, but not that different. “If I do this, Uncle Luke, if I really commit to it, I’m going to have to tell you some things. So you hear them from me first, and not…” He falters a little. “You’re not going to like them,” he admits. “You’re gonna -- It’s going to be hard. But I think I need to be honest. About what he did. To me. Even if it’s hard.”

Luke runs his thumb over Ben’s knobby knuckles. There’s so many little scars on Ben’s hand -- thin white lines where he came too close to his knife, the shining remains of old burns. There are worse ways to get scars, of course. At least Ben seems to enjoy his work.

“You know I’d never advise you _not_ to be honest,” he says, and Ben’s mouth quirks up again. “And certainly not to spare me. Whenever you’re ready to talk, Ben, I am always glad to hear you out. Actually, I’d consider it a privilege. Knowing that you trust me.”

“I do,” Ben says immediately, but his eyes are sorrowful again. Because he didn’t, once. Or he didn’t trust himself. Or both. “I trust you, Uncle Luke.”

“I know you do,” Luke tells him. The past is another country anyway. Here, now, Ben trusts him again. It’s enough. “I know, Ben.”

Ben’s lips fold together in a thin line; he nods, but there’s an abstract something in his face that tells Luke that he’s already off on another line of thought. “My dad’s not going to take it well,” he says, quietly. “He’ll pretend he is, with me, but. I was hoping maybe you -- I don’t even know if he’ll come to you, but if he does.”

He did, a few times. While Ben was still with Snoke, Han came to Luke. Something about a Catholic grandmother and a vague memory of the power of a confessional. Enough that Luke feels reasonably comfortable saying, “I’ll help him as much as I can, Ben. As much as he’ll let me.”

_You ever figure out what the hell the point of it all was?_ Han asked him, the day of the deposition. _Why God would make a kid like Ben go through all of that? What purpose it served?_

Irenaeus would say those dark times were what molded Ben into the person he is today -- calmer, gentler, more forgiving. Less prone to extremes, more centered. That he had to experience evil to become, finally, good.

_No,_ Luke said. _In fact, I’m not even sure there was a point. I think, sometimes, bad things just happen._

He’s still making his peace with that. He probably always will be.

“It won’t be right away,” Ben says, that tentative half-smile on his face. “I don’t want to -- I know everyone wants me to take a few days off. To sort of… Catch my breath. It’s been hard. But I don’t -- I can’t put it off forever. I need to start moving on. Does that make sense?”

“Perfect sense,” Luke says, and with Ben’s scarred hand still tight in his, Ben’s dark eyes fixed on his, he remembers a little more what peace is supposed to feel like. “When you’re ready, when you want me to help you. I’m right here. I always will be.”

Ben nods, dark eyes shining. “Thanks, Uncle Luke,” he says.

Luke smiles back at him, doesn’t let go of his hand. “Thank you, Ben,” he says, and means it utterly and completely.

 

*

 

The paradox is this -- he has to be drunk to be having this conversation, and yet. He is not drunk _enough_ to be having this conversation. And yet. He is still _having_ it.

“Look, I get it,” Ben says, one hand around a bottle of some ridiculous craft beer (probably something Dameron bought; it seems like something Dameron would buy), the other clutching at Hux’s. Terribly, terrifyingly earnest. It’s almost enough to make Hux long for the days when Ben was pretending to hate him.

(That isn’t true, of course. Of course it isn’t.)

“You remember things very differently than I do,” Ben continues, and Hux just sits there and listens to him, his hand still clutching Ben’s, a bottle of Dameron’s ridiculous craft beer sweating on the table in front of him. “But that’s the _point_ , Hux. It was different for me. I don’t remember the things that you do. All I remember is you holding me, and telling me I was your friend and that you were going to take care of me and you were going to _help_ me and -- I know you know I needed that. But I don’t think you’ll ever really know how much I needed it. I didn’t even know. And then you were there. And all those things I’d given up on…”

“Stop it,” Hux says, and doesn’t let go of Ben’s hand, and doesn’t turn away, and probably doesn’t even really mean it in the first place. Just. He still hates it, the way Ben gave up on everything, the way he stood by and let him until it was so close to too late. Too close.

“I did, Hux,” Ben says, all wide-eyed sincerity, so fucking tender and yet so fucking _relentless_. Talking and talking and talking and Hux is not drunk enough for this. It is not humanly possible to be drunk enough for this and still be conscious. No one could do it. “I gave up on so much. I couldn’t see any way out. I thought Snoke was all I had. And then you --”

“What, crawled into bed with you and gave you a handjob?” It’s cruel. It’s crueler than he should be with Ben, but Ben was cruel to him first, what with all the talking. Hux was fine not talking. Hux was doing perfectly fine not saying a damn thing at all.

The worst thing is, Ben doesn’t get angry or pull away or do anything other than stare at Hux with those fucking eyes of his. So tender. So relentless. “You were there. And you cared. And not just -- I hated myself, for wanting you so much. I thought if you knew -- But it didn’t change anything for you. You still cared. That meant something, Hux. More than you’ll ever know. You saw who I was, exactly who I was, and you still -- ”

“I _molested_ you, Ben.” Hux should pull away. Doesn’t. Can’t. “Whether you wanted me or not doesn’t matter. You were asleep. You had to be asleep. You wouldn’t have let me near you if you were awake. You know as well as I do that you wouldn’t --”

“Because Snoke told me I couldn’t trust you,” Ben says, and Hux knew that, of course he did, but it’s still -- Neither of them have said it before. Haven’t admitted it, what Snoke did to them. To both of them. “Because I would’ve thought it was some trick, you trying to weaken me, trying to drag me down, undermine me so you could take my place -- Because he knew the only way to make me into what he wanted me to be was to isolate me completely. To make it so I couldn’t trust anyone. So there was no one else to turn to. Just him.” He’s tearing up now, eyes glistening with it. Hux would like to pretend his own eyes aren’t burning, but he tries not to lie to himself like that. “I needed you, Hux. I _needed_ you. And I know you know that, because you were there, and you gave me exactly what I needed even if you didn’t totally understand how or why I needed it. Even if you still don’t. But I do, Hux. I do.”

And he’s not drunk enough to say this either, let alone drunk enough for his voice to shake the way it does when he says, “But there could have been another way.”

Ben sets his beer down next to Hux’s, cups the back of Hux’s head in his damp hand. Tips their foreheads together, and Hux grips his shoulders, shaking. “No,” he says, breathing it out just inches from Hux’s lips. “Not with me. Maybe another person, maybe someone not me, there would’ve been a better way. But I’m… I’m not exactly like other people, Hux. That’s how Snoke got to me. That’s how everything started. You knew me, and you knew what I was like, and you… It was the only way, Hux. For me, it was the only way.”

The worst thing is, he knows Ben is right. He loves Ben, he genuinely does, but there were parts of him that were screwed up long before Snoke got to him. He is better now, in a lot of ways -- Rey was good for him -- but there was always that bent part of him. It’s what made Ben and Snoke such a perfect storm: the devoted masochist and the inventive sadist. Tenderness was never anything Ben was going to seek on his own. Hux had to force it on him.

“I wanted to kill him,” Hux says, because if he’s honest with himself, he’s not great at tenderness either. Even here, now, with his forehead pressed to Ben’s and the tips of their noses touching, he has no idea what to do. So he babbles. “I used to lay in that bed with you and imagine what it would look like, his brains spattering against the back wall of his study. The red everywhere. It was comforting, honestly. Imagining the surprise in his eyes right before I pulled the trigger.”

“Hux,” Ben says, pained. Desperate, even, like they’re back there all over again. Like the memories are that close. “They would’ve killed you. I wouldn’t have been able to protect you from that. You know I wouldn’t. You saw -- As hard as I tried, I never could’ve --”

Hux saw. He remembers the men carrying Ben back to their room, bleeding, eyes swollen, whole body hanging limp. There is a thin white line in Ben’s eyebrow to this day, where Hux put the stitches in himself; he draws back a little bit to see it, reaches up to touch that line. He thinks he can still feel the raised edge of the scar. Proof of survival. “That’s why I didn’t,” he says. “You needed me too much. I wasn’t going to leave you, Ben. Not like that.”

“I did need you,” Ben echoes, leaning a little into Hux’s touch. Hard as he tries, Hux doesn’t think he’ll ever really understand what he and Ben are to each other. There just isn’t a label for it, not in any language he knows. “I did. I still do.”

“I know.” Hux tucks a bit of Ben’s hair behind his ear. “You know I -- I didn’t mind it. You do know that, don’t you?” It’s important, somehow, that Ben knows. “It’s not something I crave, the way other people do, but it didn’t bother me. Touching you like that. I’m not traumatized for life or anything. I just… I wouldn’t have done it like that. If I had a choice.”

“Okay,” Ben says, nodding. Still all wide-eyed sincerity. “Okay. It’s… I know. I know. I wish it had been different too. But I’m not… It could have been worse, for me. It could have been much worse. I’m a lot happier, you know. That it was you. Okay?”

_I mean, he never -- I used to think about it. A lot. Worry about it. That he would. The way he he put his hands on me, sometimes, when I was supposed to be meditating, I used to think_ \--

Hux buries both hands in Ben’s hair and presses their foreheads together, as if doing so will somehow make him not have to think about it anymore. “I’m sorry,” Hux says. “Not that it was me, but. That it almost wasn’t.”

Ben’s hands cup Hux’s shoulders, gently. “It’s okay,” he says. “You kept your promise. You got me out. You kept me safe. Thank you, Hux.”

Hux doesn’t have words to answer that. He just stays where he is, this strange half-hug, and closes his eyes.

Sometimes, he thinks Ben is as close as he’ll ever come to falling in love with someone.

Sometimes, _close_ isn’t the right word at all.

It isn’t what Ben and Poe have; it’s not anything Hux has a name for. But it’s there, and it’s theirs, and Hux wouldn’t trade it for anything.

 

*

 

He carries it out to the Diag with him, out to the open sky and the people hurrying past, busy with their own lives. It’s raining a little, and no one is sitting on the benches. No one is standing and talking. They race past, buried under hoods and umbrellas.

Finn lets them all go. He stands on the M and shuts his eyes.

_He was a teacher. I thought… You’re supposed to trust them. Teachers. I thought I was supposed to trust him._

Hux said the same thing, or something close to it. Years ago, on the witness stand, and Finn watched him from behind the prosecutor’s table, holding his grandmother’s hand. Hux was so angry, but it wasn’t just anger. Even as a kid, Finn could see that. Hux was hurt. He felt betrayed. He’d trusted someone to take care of him and they hadn’t done it. Instead, they’d hurt him. Snoke had hurt him. Kidnapped him. Kept him away from his home and his family and tried to brainwash him into killing someone.

_I’m sorry I didn’t stop him sooner_ , he’d said, kneeling in front of Finn. _I should have found a way to do it. I didn’t. I’m very sorry for that._

But it wasn’t Hux’s fault. Finn was just a kid, but he could see that. It wasn’t Hux. It was Snoke.

And Hux couldn’t have stopped Snoke, but maybe someone else could have. If they’d been there. Paying attention.

And that was when Finn decided to become a teacher. The kind of teacher a kid like Hux or Ben could trust.

_I’ve been thinking about it. What you asked me. And I guess… I guess I don’t have an answer. I don’t know how someone could’ve stopped it. What was happening with me and Snoke. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, just that I don’t have an answer. But that doesn’t mean you can’t find one, Finn. I think you could. I think, if you ever have to, you will._ And Ben had smiled, then, and said, _You’re gonna be a great teacher, Finn._

Snoke is dead now. Finn’s still here. In a little over a month, he’ll be back in a high school classroom, this time without a partner, ready to start his student teaching. He’ll pass his certification, he’ll find a school (somewhere close, somewhere he can be near Hux, and Ben and Poe, and Rey -- Rey now and hopefully Rey forever, or at least for as long as she wants him). The past isn’t gone, but the future’s still coming, and Finn is going to be a part of it. Better than that, he’s going to shape it.

He’s going to reach out and help kids -- kids like Ben, like Hux, like Rey. Like himself. He’s going to give them everything he can, and then he’s going to send them out into the world to make it a better, brighter place.

He is going to put so much light into the world that all the darkness Snoke could devise is washed clean away by the brilliance of it.

He is going to be a great teacher. And that’s a goddamned promise.

He opens his eyes. It isn’t raining anymore, not even a drizzle. The sky’s still gray, but the sun is somewhere behind it. It’ll come back again.

Finn takes a deep breath, lets it out slow, and starts walking. He’s meeting Rey for coffee in half an hour. Might as well show up early, dry off a little so she doesn’t fuss. Not that she does, much. She gets things. Gets him. And he’s pretty sure he gets her, too. It’s pretty cool, finding someone like that.

It’s gonna be a good year. He can feel it.

 

*

 

Sooner or later, it all comes back to the problem of evil. The constant search to understand how a just and loving God could allow so much suffering in the world. Some might say that there is a higher purpose to the pain, a plan that we mortals could never understand. That everything will come out right in the end, if we just have a little faith.

Ben Organa doesn’t really buy that.

“Yeah,” he says, staring down at the table. “Yeah, no, it’s… I think I could have been okay if I was the only one hurt. The idea that maybe I needed to experience that kind of suffering in order to get to a specific truth, to figure out who I really was -- I could handle that. But so many people got hurt.”

He glances up again, those dark, intense eyes. Starts listing them one by one. “I mean, Finn’s father died. And Finn, his family -- everyone who knew him, who lost him. Who had to learn to live without him. And then my family lost me for fourteen years, and that was hard for them. Hux’s parents, when he was gone. And then after, because he didn’t come back the same, really. Hux, of course. Rey. Rey’s mother, in a lot of ways. Most of the First Order people, really; I mean I know that some of them were complicit in it but a lot of them were just… Like me you know. They wanted to be good. They wanted someone to tell them how. The kids, especially. And then all those people had families, too, who missed them and who worried and ---

“I mean, how do you accept that? How do you look at all that suffering and say, ‘Well, there must have been some purpose so that makes it okay?’ I can’t do that. I can’t just shrug and call it part of the plan and just move on. That’s not --

“And I don’t think that’s what God wants. For us to be passive like that. I can’t believe in that. I can’t have faith in that. I think -- I have always thought -- that God wants us to do more than just let evil happen and try not to complain about it for fear of insulting the grand design. I think we’re meant to _try_. To be better. To make the world better.”

He goes quiet for a moment. His shoulders soften.

“And I know that’s how Snoke got to me,” he admits. “And I know he used that part of me to make the world a darker place. And I regret that. I do. I regret it every day.

“But at the same time, there’s still so much darkness in the world. What Snoke did to me, you know, people do that every day to kids like me, kids who are gay or bi or transgender, who are struggling and scared and trying to fight who they are to conform to some idea of… Whatever. Purity. Acceptability. I don’t know. And what Rey’s stepfather did to her, trying to keep her out of school, treating her like property, like some kind of… Just a possession to be passed on to someone else, no real rights, that happens all the time too. Everything I saw in the First Order, that’s still out there. In the world. It happens every day. Every day. So for me to shrug my shoulders and turn away and act like it’s not happening… No. No. I can’t do that.

“And I can’t stop all of it. I know that. I can’t wave my hands and make everyone free. I wish I could, but I can’t. But maybe if I tell my story, if people know what happened to me, then maybe they’ll recognize it when it starts happening to someone else. And maybe they’ll care enough to try to stop it. And that could be a start of something. Something good. Something that helps people.”

It’s been a long, hard road, but after years of silence, Ben Organa finally seems to have found his voice.

“It’s funny,” he adds, quietly. “I remember, when Snoke died, I was so terrified. He said so many times that if he died before the work was complete, before we’d built a new world, that what would happen next would be a thousand times worse than anything I could imagine. That everything I’d seen in mediation, all the horror, all the death -- that it would all pale in comparison to what would happen if Snoke died with the work incomplete. And I knew he’d lied so many times, but standing there, in front of his old house, hearing that he was gone --”

And then he shrugs his shoulders, shakes his head, and smiles. “And then then the world kept spinning,” he says. “And the sun came up. And we were all still here, and I don’t think we’re going anywhere. Not for a long time.

“And there’s still work to be done,” he finishes. “So, okay. Let’s get started.”

**Author's Note:**

> If "Begin" was my attempt at pushing aside some of what's happening in the world right now, I think this might be my attempt at dealing with it in a more direct fashion. Without necessarily having everyone at Organa Campaign HQ in shock and mourning, anyway.
> 
> But the world's still here, and so are we, so. Okay. Let's get started.


End file.
